Keywords

podcasting, community building, content creation, social media, email marketing, online criticism, business funding, personal branding, authenticity, audience engagement

Summary

In this conversation, Sam Berne shares insights on starting and growing a podcast, emphasizing the importance of community engagement, time management, and authenticity. He discusses various strategies for content creation, including leveraging social media and email marketing, while also addressing common concerns about costs and equipment. Sam provides practical advice on handling online criticism and navigating business partnerships, ultimately encouraging listeners to be patient and authentic in their branding efforts.

Takeaways

You don’t need fancy audio equipment to start a podcast.

Building a community through podcasting can enhance your reach.

Posting excerpts on social media can increase podcast downloads.

Time management is crucial for consistent content creation.

Utilizing platforms like Upwork can help find freelance talent.

Artificial intelligence can assist in content generation.

Diversifying content across platforms can attract more followers.

Starting a podcast can be done with free services.

Quality is less important than authenticity in podcasting.

Being authentic helps in building a strong personal brand.

Titles

The Art of Podcasting: Building Community

Maximizing Engagement Through Social Media

Sound bites

“You can find great talent on Upwork.”

“You can start a podcast for free.”

“Be authentic to build your brand.”

Chapters

00:00 Starting a Podcast: The Basics

02:53 Building Your Audience Through Collaboration

05:28 Time Management for Content Creation

08:43 Utilizing Social Media for Engagement

11:28 Navigating Podcasting Costs and Equipment

14:15 Leveraging Email Marketing for Sales

17:04 Handling Online Criticism and Feedback

19:54 Exploring Funding Options for Technology

22:54 Creating Content Without Video

25:37 Authenticity in Personal Branding

28:25 Final Thoughts on Building a Brand

Sam Berne (00:00 .822)

One of the things I was interested in was having a podcast and my content was created by asking the community to send me their questions. Now, there are a lot of apps available where you can record right on your phone and upload to your podcast page. That’s what I did at the very beginning. You don’t need fancy audio equipment. You don’t need, you know, the the high-end things. I wouldn’t recommend that.

But by starting a podcast, there’s so many different ways that you can go. You could have say in Santa Fe, your business was restaurants rest your restaurant owner. What you could do is you could actually invite other people in the industry to come on your show and that would help you cross-pollinate. They get to know about you. You’d get to know about them again. It’s part of that giving where you’re not asking the guests for anything, but you let them

talk about themselves and so they have their audience. have your audience and this is how you start building the podcast and at this point I’ve got a very large download monthly download. You can get analytics from it and a very high retention rate where people want to listen to the entire podcast. So I’ve had some interest interesting guests on I’ve done a lot of Q &A podcasts and then you can also

look to be on other people’s podcasts as well. So there’s a lot of different advantages to being to having a podcast because it’s that audio channel and it’s another funnel for you to start to get followers. One of the things I do with my podcasts is I sometimes they’re very short. They’re five minutes or they’re three minutes and I say, hey everybody is doctor Sam and I clarity podcast.

And you know, I have this great idea blah blah blah, and I’ll talk about it for a few minutes. Well, that’s our show for today. Thanks for tuning in until next time. So I’m posting maybe four to six podcasts a week. And also another thing that you can do is you can take excerpts from the entire podcast and you can post those on your social media site. So I do that all the time. I just did a interview with a doctor and we took the

Sam Berne (02:29 .144)

the podcast and we split it up into maybe 30 second sound bites and we posted those on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and it doubled the amount of people who actually ended up downloading the entire podcast. So there are different techniques that you can use. You can even record a pre-recorded intro and an outtake at the very end, you know, something like if you have questions, you can text me.

Or you can send me an email or here’s my upcoming online workshop. So there are ways again that you can use the podcast the audio channel as a simple free way to start building your community. Another thing you can do is you can go on Facebook or Instagram or tick-tock or YouTube and you can do a live show Q &A and this is amazing.

When you start doing this on a regular basis, you will get you will get interactions with other people and they will get to know you and this is another great way to develop your brand. Looks like there’s Q &A. We’ve got a few questions. So let me let me start with this one. I’m intrigued by the idea of four to eight content pieces per day, but can’t imagine how to do that and still have time.

To do my other work. How do you budget time for that? Well, I would start off with maybe pick one of the social media sites that you know, you’re most attracted to you maybe can look at where you think most of your customers are and

Maybe post one a day or two a day. I think it’s going to take some time management organization. You know, I always say if you’re really passionate in what you’re doing, you will find the time to post maybe again, you can get one of these scheduling content programs and you can take all of your pieces and put it in the

Sam Berne (04:45 .761)

the scheduling program and you can do it that way but pick one of the social media sites that you like and just maybe post one a day or if you can do two a day and see how that goes for a while and then you know, you might then at that point if you’ve got the the the budget, maybe you hire somebody to help you in the posting. I mean at this point I do have employees that are doing

my editing and posting, but I’m making enough money now that I can do that when I started out. I was doing everything and I was full-time in my practice, but I knew that this was the ticket for me to be able to create a brand and it would create a legacy for me that I could then maybe let go of some of the other things that I didn’t like doing because I so enjoyed the creative process. So start slow.

and just see what happens. All right. Can you recommend who to find someone to help with Google and updating a blog or blog? Okay, so there are two sources that I use that I tap to great get great talent. The first is Craigslist. The second is a platform called Upwork and Upwork is a platform

that where there are a lot of freelance people and you can actually create a post on Upwork. It won’t cost you anything and I have gotten some of my best talent. got my bookkeeper. got my website. People that are that are managing my website my web store manager my person who organizes my posts so Upwork.com would be a great place for you to look.

If you can’t find anybody on Craigslist, but my goodness, there’s so many writers out there. Maybe you can find somebody at one of the at the community college and that way you won’t have to pay as much maybe a student somebody who’s a good writer. So there are ways that you can figure this out writing is is hard for me. And one of the things I’ve started to use now is an artificial intelligence platform.

Sam Berne (07:14 .442)

or actually tell the artificial intelligence. This is what I’m interested in. Tell me about this process in my, you know, in my industry and they will they will come back with some outline and you know, it’s pretty good. And so then I just fill in the pieces and make it more personal artificial intelligence is definitely increasing in impinging on our lives whether we like it or not.

But that’s a way that sometimes if I need to do a quick blog, I’ll do it that way. But there are lot of avenues there. Try those and that should help you. Okay, next question. My business is focused on city management and municipal government. I have been writing monthly newsletters on LinkedIn and in one year have 315 subscribers. Some mayors and city managers are on LinkedIn. However,

City Councilors tend to be on Twitter and I’m hesitant to join. What’s your experience with Twitter? Can I direct people on Twitter to my website where I can repost my 25 articles from LinkedIn? Well, you know, Elon Musk is really wreaking havoc with Twitter right now and there there’s all kinds of things going on with Twitter that

I can really understand where a lot of people have mixed feelings about it. I post every day on Twitter. I probably do five to seven posts on Twitter. You can interact with people. It’s a great way to have conversations with people in your industry. You know, you could actually spend time looking up say in your situation, mayors and city councilor city managers who are on Twitter and you could engage with them.

And then maybe at that point, once you engage with them, if there’s some communication back and forth, you can definitely direct them away from Twitter towards your website. But I I would say this that the more you diversify your content. The more followers you’re going to get and you know, the same goes with LinkedIn wher